Dean and the Duck
by Alex E. Andras
Summary: Wee!Chesters. Sammy's first word hurts John the most. Oneshot.


For angel-death-dealer, because she puts up with me all the time, and because she understands.

Dean and the Duck

Sammy's first word is 'Dea', and it cuts John to the quick.

They are camped out in a motel; some non-descript place in the line of what is to become too many to count, though one that iss decent. The long string of seedy motels where Dean sleeps with one hand on the knife under his pillow and John doesn't sleep at all whilst he's there aren't scheduled for another six years, and for now John believes that the hunt will be done with soon. For now he believes that he'll find the son of a bitch that killed Mary sooner, rather than later, and soon he'll be finding a house that he and the boys can call a home, and they'll try to piece together the lives that they have lost.

In the mean time John is huddled over the dining table of the motel, the surface covered in a landslide of papers, trying to piece together stories and facts and legends that have been given to him by other men, other hunters. At his hand sits his journal, still new and tidy, the leather clean and only slightly liness, and only a scant number of pages are filled, but that would change swiftly, even if John doesn't know it yet.

Across the room Dean is playing with Sammy. None of their toys were salvaged from the fire, those that had survived or avoided the burning were either wrecked by water or smoke, but John has brought them what he could – a bear for Sammy and a fire-truck for Dean like the men who had stopped the fire had – and Pastor Jim has given him blocks and children's books and puzzles with jumbo pieces, arguing that it wasn't charity but a way for John to keep the boys quiet whilst he worked.

Dean is holding Sammy's bear in front of him, small fingers squeezing the torso of the toy like a corset, jigging the oxygen-starved bear in the air and urging Sammy to 'get Max' as he clambers over one bed and onto the floor on the other side, giggling as Sammy shrieks and gives chase, crawling across the floor to rescue his bear.

John is reading a sheet of paper on which Bobby Singer has scrawled an exorcism in barely eligible English, copying it out in tangible print in his journal, listening in on his sons, waiting to hear if there will be tears. And when Sam shrieks and shouts 'Dea' the pen in his hand jerks, sending a line of black ink off the page.

Sammy has crawled under the bed Dean had climbed over, his upper body held off the floor by his hands, though the stomach of his outfit is covered in dust because it doesn't matter how good a motel it is, they don't Hoover under the beds as well as they could, and the sheets that overhang the bed part around his head like water around a rock, Dean is a mere foot in front of him, on all fours, holding the bear frozen, staring at Sammy with wide eyes as the baby grins and reaches for the bear, burbling his brother's name over and over like John would chant an exorcism.

John abandons his work then, moves across the room and sweeps his baby out from under the bed, and the little boy cries, wails his brother's name because his fun has been interrupted and he can no longer reach Max from the recess of his father's arms, and when John sits on the bed Dean crawls up beside him and relinquishes the bear to Sammy, which silences the baby swiftly, and Sammy is left all smiles as he sucks on the wearing ear of the toy.

And John sits there, his thirteen month old reclined against one arm, staring back at him, his five year old nestled between his other arm and his side, and it all sinks in. Sammy's first word is Dea, and that cuts John to the quick. Dean's first word was 'duck', and Mary had laughed for an hour at that, laughed until her sides were sore and tears were running down her face. Dean's first word had been from a time of what was normal and safe, a time when he had had both mother and father. Sammy's first word was 'Dea'. Sammy's first word was from a time when Mary was gone, when John is just being drawn into the obsession of the hunt, and Dean is the biggest constant in his life, now that their father is starting down the path where he is becoming distant, either caught up in research or out in the dark killing what goes bump in the night, and it is the first light into how their lives will be.


End file.
